Nokia N9 Gets Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0.3 Dual-Boot

Nokia N9 hardware and Android Ice Cream Sandwich: be still our beating hearts. The ongoing Nitdroid project to put Android on the MeeGo-powered N9 has come up with a new 4.0.3 alpha release, allowing owners to boot between the official OS and an unofficial injection of Ice Cream Sandwich. The list of working functionality is surprisingly long, too, given its alpha status: multitouch, 3D drivers and OpenGL, and GSM/3G connectivity are all playing ball.

The physical volume and power buttons are recognized properly, as are any headset buttons, and the USB port is recognized. The LCD shuts off in sleep mode as you'd expect, and there's Bluetooth and accelerometer support too. Audio playback works in the earpiece, speaker and through a headset.

Elsewhere things get a little patchy. Charging doesn't actually affect the power icon graphic, so it's presumably tough to know what sort of level the battery is at, and it takes a hack to recognize the documents folder. Video decoding is handled by software, too, and YouTube is reportedly choppy.

Switching between the two platforms is done via holding the volume up key while rebooting, at which you get a menu option to load into Android instead of MeeGo. There are some other issues, and it's probably not ready for primetime use, but it's certainly igniting our longstanding lust for an N9 again.

[Thanks Steve for the tip and the photo!]